DailyTech received its first looks at a GeForce 8800
production sample today, and by the looks of it, the card is a monster: at
least with regard to size and power requirements.

The GeForce 8800 comes in two flavors, which we will get into more detail about
over the course of the next few days. The first card, the
GeForce 8800GTX, is the full blown G80 experience, measuring a little less than 11 inches in length. The GeForce 8800GTS is
a cut down version of the first, and only 9 inches in length.

The marketing material included with the card claims NVIDIA requires at least a
450W power supply for a single GeForce 8800GTX, and 400W for the 8800GTS.
Top tier vendors in Taiwan have already confirmed with DailyTech that
GeForce 8800 cards in SLI mode will likely carry a power supply
"recommendation" of 800W. NVIDIA's GeForce 7950GX2, currently the company's top performing video card, carries a recommendation of 400W to run the card in single-card mode.

NVIDIA is slated to launch both versions of the GeForce 8800 in November of this
year. More details on the GeForce 8800 will be available later today on DailyTech.

Update 10/05/2006: We originally reported the GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS are 9" in length. The reference design for the 8800GTX is actually a little less than 11 inches. The GTX has two 6-pin power adaptors, the GTS has only one.

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Performance to watt deals with mobile computing and Data Center implementations. In the data center more efficient CPUs can not only decrease your power bill but it can also increase the effectiveness of your UPS and AC implementations.

Should not be a concern for gamers. The "massive" power draw will also be while gaming. I'm sure they won't need to draw as much power to render Vista's Aero Glass. For most gamers, this won't be an issue. The x1900 series already produces a boatload of heat and draws significantly more power then it's competitor ... this hasn't stopped it from being a performance favorite of so many.

This isn't to say that I'm not slightly disappointed by the power supply requirements. I build easy to transport LAN Party rigs. I've been going with NVIDIA for "customers" over the past 9-18 months due to the quieter stock coolers and lower heat output. This new card is going to be problematic for the SFF/mATX crowd. While you can drop a new massive power supply in a Q-Pack or an UltraFly, many SFF (Shuttle-like) cases are still stuck with smaller form factor power supplies. I may have to wait for a more efficient "8 9 00" series. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the performance is like... I may have to put SFF aside for a few months and stick with overloaded Q-Packs.

that's ok, since G80 is just a pilot generation of dx10 hardware and will get much cooler (in all senses of the word) in the next generations, so you'll get back your SFF eventually. it's just moronic downmodding clowns that don't understand some obvious things, but we're talking about normal people, now don't we?

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